Oroville Dam Disaster Is Latest In Series Of CA Government Corruption, Environmental Failures

On February 13th, 2017 residents in Oroville, CA, were given a last second, panicked directive to evacuate their homes and flee the area due to concerns that the Oroville dam was about to imminently fail. At the time of this article, the dam has still not yet failed. Should it fail though, California's government may face tough questions about their failure to adequately prepare for a disaster they had been warned about for over a decade.

California negligently failed to make preparations for the inevitable end to a major drought which had been occurring since 2011. For 12 years, environmental groups had warned federal and state officials that the dam was likely to experience structural issues in the event of heavy rains and flooding. Reports are surfacing that the large pothole which has lead to the failure of the Oroville dam spillway was known to the state governmet since 2013. Governor Jerry Brown had years to direct the Democrat controlled state government to authorize funding and enact plans for repairs to the dam while water levels remained low. The Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 set aside $395,000,000 for flood management, but to date has not allocated any of it to actual repairs or projects, raising questions about where the money currently sits and what it has been used for since 2014.

California's corruption causes it to consistently approve projects which are financially and logistically convenient for special interest groups at the expense of their citizens. Energy companies in Southern California are currently being sued by citizens over plans to bury nuclear waste from the reactors at San Onofre, California underwater in thin canisters without any clear explanation about how they would monitor the storage devices or explaining how the canisters will be removed once the 20 year approval permit has expired. The ill conceived project was approved by the California Coastal Commission in 2015. The California Coastal Commission was created by Governor Jerry Brown and has been itself the source of controversy after they fired their executive director Charles Lester, who was described as an "essential line of protection between developers and environmentalists." The Commission is currently the subject of multiple lawsuits, all of which allege that Coastal Commission members have had improper private contacts with permit applicants (ex-parte communications) with developers or their representatives prior to voting on those permits.

Jerry Brown himself has recently come under scrutiny as well, after a February 1st, 2017 report by the Los Angeles Times revealed that Governor Brown still retained $15 million in campaign funds with no clear guidelines as to how he would spend it. This story follows reports that Brown's Chief of Staff Nancy McFadden took over a million dollars from Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and continued to hold stock in PG&E despite playing a key role in the appointment process for new members of the state Public Utilities Commission, which regulates PG&E and other California utilities (including the ones behind the controversial plans for San Onofre's nuclear waste).

..."raising questions about where the money currently sits and what it has been used for since 2014." How about spent trying to meet CALPERS payments that are about to become mathematically impossible?

The reports reflect the minimal science education of typical journalists. It seems there are two spillways, one regular concrete and an emergency spill way. The regular spillway seems to be eroded forcing them to use the emergency spillway. Both seem to be about to fail because nature will have it's way and more rain is coming and snow is melting. To the tune of I've Got My Love to Keep me Warm.

The regular spillway failed at less than the designed flow rate, way less. Why did it fail? Because of a pothole under it detected in 2013 and never fixed.Oh, it don't rain in California so we don't need to do anything." Was that someone's answer. Well it's time to pay the devil.

There were state environmental organizations that petitioned to have the emergency spillway armored with stone and or concrete. It's need to spend the money was turned down. (Seems the state had a lot of money from bond issues. I think the Sacramento Bee said 20 billion has been approved by voters. In whose pocket did it go?)

the gas well at Aliso Canyon blew out late october. LA County declared a state of emergency Dec 5. On december 7 ken harris is appointed by the governor as state oil and supervisor (even though harris has no oil experience whatsoever). Harris' first 30 days on the job consist of two weeks of vacation. Yes, Harris went on vacation days after starting his new job while thousands of famlies were fleeing in fear for their safety - during a declared emergency.

I worked for a while for a steel distributor. I picked orders (using an overhead crane) and loaded trucks with their deliveries.

One item we sold a lot was rebar. Rebar is short for reinforcing bar, and it is that long textured rod that you see in bundles at contruction sites, big building, roads, etc.

Concrete has certain qualities that make it a good material for certain structures. Concrete is excellent for resisting compression. So it is good for a road, with all those vehicles mashing it. But it tears more easily, I think that is called tensile strength. So you see rebar laid down into the cement to give it better strength in that dimension. And when you see a structure collapse, a bridge fall or a big building fail in a quake, you see rebar get exposed, sticking out from the structure.

So I am looking at that 200' hole in the spillway, but I don't see any rebar exposed. Water running down this spillway wouldn't exert large compression forces but you would worry about shearing. Rebar helps prevent that shearing. But was there any rebar used? If you wanted to build a spillway on the cheap, forgo a material that nobody sees in the final product, that would be one way, just shortsheet the rebar requirement.

Now, most of the time, when a structure fails, some engineer forgot to calculate the wind or weight or torques or some other factor,, and it is not corruption just major human error. So the rebar might be missing because calculations (incorrectly) said you don't need it. Or, maybe somebody skimmed the rebar dollars.

I don't know, but maybe somebody here closer to this could do some digging.

y'know, that is a very good question, Richard. they put rebar in concrete roads....they put rebar in industrial concrete...and although I'm no structural engineer, you'd think pouring concrete on a dirt ramp that's not too too steep would be like an ideal spot for a rebar floor.

There have been several pictures showing rebar. There is one good picture of a truck sized piece of concrete folded back from the edge of the hole after the first high-flow test. It was held in place by many "hairs". Those hairs are #18 rebar. Everyone forgets scale when looking at these pictures.

Reports are that it was an earthen spillway, in fact different groups have been trying to get the state to line it with concrete for years, in fact during the drought would have been an ideal time to line the spillway since there would have been no chance that it would be needed.

Your talking about the emergency spillway. The main spillway was designed for a very high flow rate based upon intake water from a large geographic flood zone that would come down the mountains and flow though the valleys to this holding reservoir. Perhaps an input from the theoretical 100 year flood.

The main spillway would have a design that had to be approved by a compete engineering agency (probably at federal level too). And then it is constructed according to plan with independent inspectors.

The California schools are built to high earthquake standards thanks to school destruction though not casualties from the 1934 earthquake which occurred at night. I supervised (representing the school engineering department) construction of a large , modern high school and I can tell you our DSA (Division of the State Architect) inspector was all over the contractor who was putting rows of #8 rebar into the foundation of the clear span library.

I am sure if rebar was to be installed, it was. The size, spacing, placement checked before any concrete was poured. I saw some early pictures which looked like the floor of the spillway was constructed of planks but I am sure all of us arm-chair engineers have not stood next to the spillway.

A competent investigation will surely tell us where the failures came from.

The main spillway is the real calamity. If you look at the pictures taken before they opened it back up again, you can see it is completely bisected about half way up. At the bottom you can see massive energy disrupting blocks on an even more massive footing. This footing was supporting much the weght of the spillway and preventing it from sliding down the steep earthen embankment. The upper half no longer has this support and coulld fail spectacularly, allowing the discharge to erode the embankment up to the dam's footing.

If the heavy rains that are forecasted don't cause a failure, the melting of the record snowpack will. If we looked back over other record snowpacks, we would see large releases through the main spillway perhaps for weeks. The main spillway cannot sustain this now and the emergency concrete overflow weir is on the verge of being undermined and failing as well. The hydrologists know this already.

A: The emergency spillway is a dirt embankment topped with a lip of concrete. The heavy flow of water coming over the lip was washing away the dirt on the normally dry side, and officials feared that could eventually undercut the concrete, causing it to fail. Federal officials said in the past that the spillway could handle 20 times more water than what was seen when it went into use Saturday.

Q: Why wasn’t the emergency spillway reinforced?

A: Environmental groups raised an alarm 12 years ago, saying the emergency spillway might not be enough in an overflow situation. But a request for funding to line it with concrete was rejected by federal authorities after water agencies advised it wasn’t necessary. Such spillways are meant to be rarely used. In denying the request, an engineer for the federal government wrote that “during a rare flood event, it is acceptable for the emergency spillway to sustain significant damage.” Reinforcing the emergency spillway would also be very expensive — estimates were tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars.'¹

It will great if rest of AMERICA know how the DemocRATS scumbags in Sacremento have held public works general funds to counties where they are predominatly Conservatives and Republicans, and diverted them to in supporting the Illegal aliens and "EBT" card FREE LOADER, and not really helped these communities roads and bridges.

The Mexican mafia hijacked the CA legislature and Dept of Water Resources about 20 years ago, so CA has about 20 years of stolen funds from deferred maintenance to make up, fortunately they have a huge stupid voter base which will vote to issue more bonds from their homeless food centers.

I live here and contract to PGE - they're as crooked and corrupt as the state government. They treat their contractors like shit and are now $300M in the hole, so they stopped paying many. I'm done dealing with them this month.

After spending some time to look at the Katrina Hurricane, it became clear to me that it was primarily a man-made disaster, precipitated by a predictable natural disaster. So far, Fukushima takes first prize as by far the worse of those kinds of events, where persistent political corruption permits the accumulation of man-made conditions to be triggered by some natural disaster, which was generally predictable to eventually happen.

Globalized Neolithic Civilization is ALL based upon being able to back up lies with violence. Since the violence never stops those lies from still being false, the tragic trajectory is for everything that Globalized Neolithic Civilization does to deteriorate towards human behavior which is increasingly psychotic, in the sense of more and more out of touch with relatively objective physical and biological realities, because the social "realities" are more and more based on having been able to enforce frauds, while advancing technologies enabled those to become about exponentially more fraudulent.

The USA developed to become the leading component of Globalized Neolithic Civilization's abilities to build itself on the basis of being able to enforce frauds. Since doing so was the most socially "successful" strategies in each short to medium term increment, the most socially "successful" people became the best available professional hypocrites.

Every facet of social "realities" that one more deeply investigates always demonstrates the same basic patterns of the vicious spiral of political funding resulting in the enforcement of frauds, which automatically become worse, faster. It tends to be quite futile to point out any relatively objective physical and biological realities, due to the ways that those are attempting to be advanced within an overall context where social "realities" have become as dishonest as possible, as well as are trends to become exponentially more dishonest.

It is relatively easy to come up with lists of possible natural disasters, regarding which nothing is being done other than allow the infrastructures which would have to cope with those to continue to deteriorate. In my opinion, Civilization is less than 1% effectively prepared for various possible natural disasters, as well as has done less than 1% to attempt to prevent those natural disasters from causing concatenated consequences of the related man-made disasters which end up making things worse.

The underlying reasons for the development of Globalized Neolithic Civilization to have become like that are the relationships between natural selection and artificial selection, such that natural selection pressures have driven the development of artificial selection systems to become as dishonest as possible. The root of those trends are due to the ways that Civilization is controlled by its murder systems, which were most socially "successful" by becoming as deceitful and treacherous as possible. That then enabled the development of fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, which are primarily based upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks, as well as developing an entire panoply of increasingly sophisticated and integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, none of which stopped those lies from still being fundamentally false.

Social "realities" were actually driven by natural realities to become as dishonest as previously possible, while those social "realities" continue to endeavour to become even more dishonest. Since everything that Civilization does is done through accounting systems which are based upon enforcing frauds, everything has become as fraudulent as possible, while advances in physical and biological sciences are primarily applied within the entrenched social "realities" to make those become ever more psychotically detached.

Prodigious progress in physical sciences has nothing like that to compare to in political science. Politics is and should be applied human ecology. However, the essential features of human ecology are its death control systems, which have its murder systems as the most extreme manifestations. The existing murder systems have become as deceitful and treacherous as possible, while those back up the monetary and taxation systems, which have become as fraudulent as possible.

In the case of natural disasters which are aggravated by man-made disasters, to become even worse mega-disasters, one tends to more starkly perceive the role of the governing state sending in armed forces to demand emergency compliance, including making the confiscation of citizen's private weapons to become one of the priorities of that governing state. That happened during the Katrina events, and would likely happen in any other comparable events.

The ironies are that Globalized Neolithic Civilization has obviously made weapons its biggest and most important businesses. However, that Civilization does not better understand its own death control systems, but rather, deliberately ignores and/or misunderstands those as much as possible. Every facet of that Civilization is actually based upon enforced frauds, since its "money" is all based upon enforced frauds. The combined money/murder systems are the result of the excessively "successful" applications of the methods of organized crime, driving the Civilization based upon those foundations to become runaway criminal insanities.

In order for any of the things which Civilization does to NOT automatically continue to become more and more fraudulent and insane, it would be necessary to develop social realities which admitted and addressed the death control issues and murder systems in more forthright ways. However, thousands of years of Neolithic Civilization has driven the development of the social "realities" based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds, while those sociopolitical systems are operated by the best available professional hypocrites.

Every significant infrastructure system appears to be suffering from the same overall patterns of the vicious spirals of political funding resulting in enforced frauds becoming worse, faster ... Essentially, it is politically impossible for human beings and Civilization to stop themselves from developing social "realities" which are automatically becoming more psychotic, and out of touch with physical and biological realities, due to the ways that social "realities" have become based on thousands of years of being able to back up lies with violence, despite that doing so never stopped those lies from still being false.

So far, all of the progress in physical science and technologies still ends up being channeled through sociopolitical systems based upon being able to back up lies with violence, while the almost exponential progress in physical technologies then enables the political situation to manifest exponentially increasing criminal insanities. Therefore, when on looks at the long list of possible natural disasters, which will be acerbated by man-made disasters, to become overwhelming mega-disasters, there are no good grounds to doubt that those will NOT be more effectively prepared for, and will NOT be better prevented.

Rather, everything that Globalized Neolithic Civilization has actually prepared for are developments of the means whereby death insanities could be caused to spin out out human control. Less and less is being done to effectively prevent those eruptions of death insanities, because Globalized Neolithic Civilization is automatically becoming exponentially more insane.

Although, in theory, human beings and Civilization could better understand themselves, such that social "realities" did not diverge wider and wider from physical and biological realities, that is NOT what is happening. Rather, at the present time it is politically impossible for there to be any better public debates of the relationships between natural selection and artificial selection. The currently entrenched cultures operating artificial selection are already almost totally base upon continuing to enforce frauds, as well as being already almost totally operated by the best available professional hypocrites, who have adapted to become socially "successful" within those social "realities."

It is those kinds of sociopolitical systems, run by those kinds of people, who make all the decisions that lead up to man-made disasters compounding natural disasters, to become many time worse mega-disasters. Indeed, one could regard Globalized Neolithic Civilization itself as the greatest of all mega-disasters, due to the ways in which advancing physical science ends up being primarily applied in criminally insane ways, while the about exponential advance in physical technologies therefore actually results in about exponentially increasing political insanities.

Ironically, it was natural selection pressures which drove artificial selection systems to become as dishonest as possible. Hence, it is quite understandable that human beings living inside Globalized Neolithic Civilization have collectively become criminally insane, and therefore, are primarily preparing to commit collective suicide. There are apparently NO ways that consideration of longer term consequences can stop the increments of the maximization of short and medium term concerns from continuing to deliberately ignore those longer term consequences.

One individual may come to better understand the background factors that led up to the Katrina Mega-Disaster due to prolonged man-made disasters finally being multiplied by natural disasters. Similarly, it may turn out that the events at the Oroville dam may well end up being another particular example of that pattern of social facts. However, it my view it is quite futile to bother to learn about that pattern, since when one regarding Civilization collectively one still has to most reasonably expect that nothing will be done to more effectively prevent or prepare for those kinds of events in the foreseeable future, which are certain to become more and more probable, as well as more severe.

The most extremely ironic of all the paradoxes are the ways that what has most be done is to prepare to cause death insanities, while virtually nothing has been done, nor could reasonably expect to be done, in order to better understand the death control systems in general, which, in turn, would mean that there were developed better understandings of the necessary relationships between artificial selection systems within natural selection systems. Rather, what continues to happen, in ways which are becoming more blatantly obvious to more people, are enforced frauds becoming exponentially more fraudulent. In that context, it continues to be quite politically impossible for physical and biological realities to be reconciled with social "realities," due those social "realities" being as dishonest as possible, including, of course, that those social "realities" will NOT admit and address how extremely dishonest they actually are.

After all, the oldest and best developed forms of social science and engineering were warfare, whose social "successfulness" was based on the maximum possible deceits and treacheries. Therefore, any and all attempts to develop any genuinely better social sciences continue to be quite dismal failures, except for the painfully obvious manifestations of various enforced frauds becoming exponentially more fraudulent. The Grand Canyon Chasms between progress in physical science, WITHOUT progress in political science, continues to get wider and WIDER. Everyday, in every way, we are more and more living in Wonderland Bizarro Worlds, where everything is publicly presented in the most absurdly backward ways possible.

Every infrastructure project is being done through fundamentally fraudulent financial accounting systems, wherein that "money" is like using a bent rubber ruler ... At the present time, it continues to be politically impossible for social "realities" to become better reconciled with physical and biological realities, despite that those actually drove the existing social "realities" towards becoming runaway psychotic insanities. In that context, I am personally sure that it was futile for me to bother to respond with this reply regarding how and why it is indeed correct to compare the Katrina events with the Oroville events. My current conclusions are that nothing is going to stop Globalized Neolithic Civilization from continuing to become more and more criminally insane, at about an exponential rate.

It is nothing but vainglorious fantasies to recommend some social psychiatry for the kinds of social psychoses that "we" are collectively suffering, when what is far more likely are increasingly severe mega-disasters, overlapping themselves, as multiplying crises, which make doing anything better to prevent or prepare for those become laughable, to those with a sufficiently macabre sense of humour. About the ONLY things that Globalized Neolithic Civilization has prepared for the most is to be able to participate in significant death insanities. In that context, to better understand human beings and Civilization appears to be too little, too late, as well as too trivial to matter much anymore ... From a sublime point of view, natural selection pressures have driven artificial selection systems to become more and more dishonest, to the point of becoming collective psychoses. The laws of nature are NOT going to stop working, however, that also appears to mean that the laws of nature are NOT going to stop driving Globalized Neolithic Civilization increasingly insane. Since it seems that too few people are able and willing to understand themselves doing that, there does not appear to be any realistic ways to resolve those real problems, other than by series of psychotic breakdowns, aided and abetted by series of mega-disasters.

P.S.

Anyone know whether, IF the Oroville events went through worst case scenarios, are there any nuclear power plants downstream which would be flooded? Those kinds of outcomes are what could make that be worse than Katrina, although, I doubt as bad as Fukushima already has become.